Immigration Stories
Throughout history stories have been used to illuminate, to educate, to recount, to challenge and to engage. Every individual’s life experience is unique and dynamic, particularly for those of us who have journeyed far from our homes to establish new lives in foreign countries.
Australia’s migrant history has enabled us to develop into the strong nation we are today. Personal stories and anecdotes are an important opportunity to enrich the public record and to embellish our history. Immigration Place Australia encourages the collection of immigrant stories. By giving a voice to our immigrants, we hope to record significant experiences with increased depth and nuance. We envision an opportunity to connect generations and to build community via a comprehensive record of the distinctive immigration footprint of Australia.
IPA’s mission is to continue to collect stories until completion of the construction of Immigration Place in Canberra. At that time, subject to the agreement of the National Archives of Australia those stories will be transferred to their website – Destination Australia.
We encourage you to record your stories or those of your ancestors.
All Stories
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My father left Scotland during the depression hopfully to come to a better life. He travelled 3rd class on the steam ship Benalla. The fare cost $33.00 and he arrived in Melbourne.
My father’s family were always short of money, but there was …
alexander macKenzie mackie, scotland, 1926
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Little is known of William HUNT’s life before Australia. Although his second son Vere was baptised in a Liverpool ENG Catholic church in 1836, and William and his wife Eliza Margaret HUNT nee Daley were listed on arrival in Sydney as being from…
William HUNT, Ireland, 1837
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Sakari was born to fairly wealthy parents who owned a large dairy farm in Lapua, Finland. There he grew to love horses and would race them at the trotting tracks around Finland. He also liked wrestling and during one of his wrestling tournaments he …
Sakari Lahdensuo, Finland, 1958
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London surgeon. Although orphaned at 9, he received a sound education and in 1820 became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Physical Society of Guy’s Hospital. He practised at Finchley and in 1823 married Jane West. In 1828 …
Dr John Edward Stacy, England, 1828
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My mother, father, baby sister and I came to Australia to escape the escalating violence and persecution of the Chilean Pinochet dictatorship. My father had suffered incarceration and my mother feared for his life and for our future. They applied…
Carolina Ovando, Chile, 1974
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It was after another of those wars to end wars and it was tough in post-war Germany. My parents decided to migrate to a new land with their young daughter.
The long sea journey on the ship Fairsea was an exciting time for my young parents – socially…
Lucie & Guenter STEGEN, Germany, 1953
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My mother and father left El Salvador to excape the civil war – during the eighties some of my relatives on my fathers side had been killed. During the eighties my parents had me and two other siblings. My parents wanted us to have a life were we …
Murcia Family Murcia, EL SALVADOR, 24/10/90
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Carol and I first met in August 1944 I was still at school and she was an apprentice hairdresser. I had a few jobs while waiting to be called for National Service which was to include eight months in India. We were married in June 1949.
When I was de-mobbed…
Carol and Richard Cannon, England, 1967
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Like all immmigrants from Europe immediately after WW2 my parents sought a better life by seeking immigration to the New World. My beloved mother was a simple woman from a small Italian town of Cesena, Italy. She often told me that when she immigrated…
Maria Rosa (Rosina) Paolucci, Italy, 1953
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Reason for leaving homeland – Jacobus (knows as John) and wife Cornelia wanted adventure, and of course to better their lives for themselves and their children Koos and Mattie.
We travelled from Rotterdam on the Waterman. It was a dreadful…
Jacobus Hermanus Sandifort, The Netherlands, 1958
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I was a student at the time in Barcelona, Spain and had the opportunity of migrating to Australia. The Mitchell family of Sydney promised my parents that they would look after me and were my sponsers. As a ambitious and adventurous young man and with…
John ( Juan ) de la Torre, SPAIN, 1958
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My father Richard Septimus Meynell had emigrated to Australia as a child in 1922, but chose to visit England in 1938. His timing was poor because WW2 started in 1939.
After WW2, he decided to bring his wife Barbara (my mum) and three children, David …
Brian Meynell, England, 1953
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Reason for leaving homeland – The election of the Mugabe Government and the immediate drop in standards. Birth of our first child, Lara, and a heightened awareness of where we felt that she should could grow up with a future assured.
We left …
Peter & Vivienne Craig, Zimbabwe, 1976
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Reason for leaving homeland unknown, possibly because land was becoming scarcer as big landholders were taking over smaller landholders. Archibald was accompanied by his pregnant wife Anne (Lemond) Kirkland..Archibald’s father and…
Archibald Kirkland, Scotland (Lankashire), 8/1/1853
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In 1856, only a couple of years after the Irish Potato Famine had officially ended, John and Margaret Consadine became only two of the estimated two million people to leave the shores of Ireland in search of a better life and better living conditions.…
John Consadine, Ireland, 1856
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Postwar policy was to invite large families from the Netherlands to come to Australia. I was one of eight, whose parents sought new beginnings after the World War 2. I was the eldest of the offspring of six.
We departed from Hook of Holland, on 16 January…
John Hulskamp, Netherlands, 1951
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Amelio Trento 24.07.34 – 14.09.08
Amelio was born in the small country town of Casacorba, Treviso, Italy. His family were farmers. He grew up a child of the war years. As a young man he worked in a convent in Venice. At the age of 22 he decided to …
Amelio Trento, Italy, 1956
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William was born on about 7 November 1778 possibly at St Mary-le-bone Middlesex.
On 1 July 1795 William was indicted for stealing a ₤20 banknote from his Master James Massey in his dwelling house in Margaret Street, Cavendish Square. William…
William Dean, England, 1799
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Sarah Darke was born in 1778 and possibly christened at Gloucester St Michael on 23 March 1778, daughter of Henry Darke and Mary (nee Hannes).
On 11 March 1795 Sarah was delivered to Gloucester City Gaol. She and Sarah Mann, both of St Mary de Crypt Parish…
Sarah Darke, England, 1796
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Andrew was born on 3 November 1771 at Southwark, London and christened on 1 December 1771 at St George the Martyr Church at Southwark. His father was a soldier who was also named Andrew, his mother’s name was Dorothy.
On 24 August 1790 Andrew …
Andrew Snowden, England, 1792
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Elizabeth Morris was probably born in Bisley Gloucestershire in 1777 and baptised on 31 August 1777.
On 5 April 1790 when she was only 12 years old she, along with 2 others, was tried at Bristol City Gaol Delivery for stealing. She was found guilty and…
Elizabeth Morris, England, 1791
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William was born on 23 March 1761 and baptised on 12 April 1761 at St. Mary’s St. Marylebone London. At this time there was increasing poverty across London because of changes in land ownership in the countryside causing people to flood to the…
William Kentwell, England, 1791
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Jozef and Daniela left Slovakia because they had a dream that their children (yet to be born) deserved the right to be bought up in a country were freedom reigned, most improtantly, and there was religious freedom. Slovakia was at that time dominated…
Jozef Daniela Vrbiak, Slovakia, 1980
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Eugenio Olivero left Italy in 1924 aged 22yrs, because the dreaded Phylloxera disease had destroyed the vines on the family farm in Province Asti, in Northern Italy. Eugenio left Genoa in July 1924 on the “Caprera” and arrived in Melbourne…
Eugenio OLIVERO, Italy, 1924
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He travelled from Germany to Australia in 1854 on the ship ” Sophia “, with his twin HEINE cousins, landing in Melbourne, then moving to Epsom and then to Bendigo.
They were miners, and winemakers.
He was born in Widerman, Hanover, Germany,…
” William ” Carl Greiffenhagen, Germany, 1854
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Born during the depression and raised by his grandparents in Wrexham North Wales , Robert ‘Bobbie\’ Crossley joined the British army as a young man. Following discharge from the army he returned to Wales and worked in an open cast coalmine…
Robert Crossley, Wales, 1959
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Our grandmother Margaret Carter was born in Blaenavon, Wales in 1903. She worked at a vicarage while her father and brothers worked in the mines. When there was no work at the pit, her father made the decision to come to Australia. Margaret did not want…
Margaret Carter Hill, Wales, 1924
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